cnn's jim spelman is south of there in peoria, illinois. jim, have the people of peoria been through this sort of thing before? >> reporter: they've been through this before. don, you can see the water already started coming up. this is the illinois river. see where it's come up along this building. heavy sandbagging on a lot of buildings over here. this is really not that unusual they would get this level of flooding in peoria. over here, take a look at their precautions they're taking for what's coming next. the advantage they've had, don, no secret this water has been coming up so they spent the last few days building barriers like this one. concrete jersey walls in the city. sandbags surrounding it. they expect the water to come up to about here. if that's the case, they feel like they'll be in good shape, this will help protect most of the businesses. if the predictions are wrong and goes higher, there could be serious damage here and in homes in low-lying areas along the river. but not just here in peoria or in illinois. 16 or so stat